Anti-Emo Riots Break Out Across Mexico // canavarlar

mexico meksika emo punk

Riot police have taken to the streets of several cities in Mexico to ... defend
emo kids?

A series of attacks on dyed-hair, eye-makeup-wearing emo kids began in
early March when several hundred people went on an emo-beating
rampage in Querétaro, a town of 1.5 million about 160 miles north of
Mexico City.

The next week, shaggy-haired emo teenagers were harassed again by
punks and rockabillys in the capital, prompting police protection and a
segment on the TV news. Most recently, a Mexican newspaper reported
that metal heads and gangsters have warned Tijuana's emo kids to stay
away from the town's fair next month.

But the so-called emos are organizing, too. Last week, they demonstrated
against the violence, pictured above, and Wednesday some met with
police in Mexico City.

"They're organizing to defend their right to be emo," wrote Daniel
Hernandez of LA Weekly on his personal blog, which has provided stellar
coverage of the whole affair.

Music-based subcultures have permeated Mexico's major cities for
decades, fueled by constant migration from rural cities. But only in the past
year have emos begun to make their presence felt in the streets. In
response, many of the established so-called tribus urbanas like punks and
metalheads are responding with violence. The emo-punk battles are
reminiscent of earlier subculture fights among various factions, like the
Hell's Angels fighting hippies at the Altamont Music Festival or the Mods
taking on the Rockers.

But while videos of Mexican teenagers with pompadours advancing on
equally baby-faced emo rockers seem like scenes from a south-of-the-
border version of John Waters' Crybaby, there are ugly undercurrents to
the story.

First, by some accounts, the emo subculture is identified with
homosexuality in Mexico. As Mexico City youth worker Victor Mendoza told
Time.com: "At the core of this is the homophobic issue. The other
arguments are just window dressing for that."

Gustavo Arellano, the author of Ask a Mexican and an editor at OC Weekly,
said that the sexual ambiguities cultivated by emo fashion helped set the
group up for targeting by more macho groups.

"What do you do when you are confronted with a question mark about
sexuality in Mexico?" Arellano said. "You beat it up."

Forum posts show similar sentiments. One person wrote on a government
youth-website forum, "detesto a los emosexuales," which translates as "I
hate emosexuals." Emosexual is an obvious play on homosexual,
especially in Spanish, where the H is silent.

Many of the attacks have been planned, or at least fomented, on violently
anti-emo websites like Movimiento Anti Emosexual, which features videos
of physical violence sprinkled liberally with anti-gay sentiment. Last.fm's
Anti Emo Death Squad group has almost 4,000 members.

But Arellano said he thought the riots could have a positive impact here in
the US.

"It's a great clusterfuck for the American mind's idea of Mexico," Arellano
said. "This teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is not just a bunch of
cactuses and sombreros."

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/anti-emo-riots.html

www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/14/20080414emos0414.html